Introduction
NEC
is a premium Japanese audio/video manufacturer with a long history of
producing some of the finest display devices made. They are famous
among industry inner circles for being sticklers for detail and their
products are known for quality and advanced design for both
professional and consumer usage. The clean lines of this new $8,995
50-inch NEC plasma give it an elegant look in a dedicated theater or
indeed almost any living environment. It is a mere 3.8 inches deep and
the bezel is as thin as a minimal picture frame. It comes in a
beautiful matte silver finish that can actually be removed for
painting. This allows the room designer options not available with
other units.

The PX-50XR4A offers every desirable input and is
fluent in both digital and analog. Colors are deep and image quality is
first rate. The gray scale is well delineated and accurately displayed.
Most importantly, it is impressive when viewed with any source, but it
particularly excels with digital sources. Live sporting events in HD
look like a window into the playing field and movies have the natural
warmth and delicate hues called for by the director.

With its slender 3.8 inches of depth, handsome in its picture frame
bezel, the unit can be either wall-mounted or placed on its stand. It
sports a multitude of video inputs. There are two RGB analog inputs
(one BNC, one 15-pin D-sub), one DVI-D HDCP, two composite video (one
BNC, one RCA), one S-Video and two analog component HD (one BNC, one
RCA). External speakers can be added and are powered by an internal
nine-watts-per-channel amplifier. Its weight of 96.4 pounds requires
care to make sure of the strength of a wall installation. In addition
to its IR remote, the unit can be controlled via a 9-pin mini D-sub RS
232 input, an important feature, if you have a whole-house control
system such as Crestron or AMX.

Calibration
As with any display device, proper calibration is important for
achieving the ultimate level of picture quality. As a professional
video calibrator by trade, I felt the unit was set up to be impressive
but not ultimately accurate out of the box. The white-level contrast is
set so that the output is at maximum on an image that calls for full
output. This puts it into a non-linear area of performance where the
last two levels of white in the gray scale are bleached out. The
black-level brightness setting is too low, removing the last two levels
of gray scale detail before black. The good news is that this is easily
correctable and, when set up to industry standards, it is very linear
and presents all of the available information.

While the unit has color temperature settings that range from low to
high, with several stops in between, they are all set incorrectly at
the factory. None of them are linear, and with 7,100K at the lowest
light level to 10,100K at the highest light level, they are well above
the reference of 6,500K. The highest light output is 48.4 foot
lamberts, well above the reference of 30 foot lamberts. The adjustments
for color temperature are available by simply pressing enter on the
remote when in the color temperature setting on the menu. The unit
adjusted easily and, when the white level (contrast) was set at
reference, was quite linear. I was amazed that this feature was easily
available to the user. You will need a trained calibrator with a meter
to complete this task and I highly recommend that you do not attempt to
do it on your own. Even the best calibrators will not attempt a color
temperature setting without a reference.

The technical test material on the Video Essentials reference DVD
revealed flaws in the digital processing, even when the unit was fed
directly through the DVI. These flaws were exacerbated when the input
was analog. The noise reduction caused a knurled glass look as it froze
a noise pattern over the image rather than eliminating it. This was
apparent only when looking closely at fine details, but I still found
it bothersome. Diagonal lines moving quickly broke up and some digital
artifacts were evident in small details when they crawled across the
screen, rather than moving smoothly. An external processor, such as
those offered by Faroudja Labs or DVDO, would most probably remove most
of the artifacts when set to the native resolution of the display.